And first this is proved by the very fact of civilisation. If our [p103] wants surpassed our faculties, we should be beings invincibly retrograde; if there were an equilibrium between them, we should be invincibly stationary. But we advance; which shows that at every stage of social life, as compared with the period that preceded it, a certain portion of our powers, relatively to a given amount of satisfactions, is left disposable. We shall endeavour to explain this marvellous phenomenon.
The explanation which Condillac has given appears to me to be quite unsatisfactory and empirical—in fact, it explains nothing. “From the very fact,” he says, “that an exchange is made, it follows that there must be profit for the two contracting parties, for otherwise it would not take place. Then each exchange includes two gains for humanity.”
Holding this proposition as true, we see in it only the statement of a result. It is in this way that the Malade Imaginaire explains the narcotic virtue of opium:—
Quia est in eo
Virtus dormitiva
Quæ facit dormire.
Exchange includes two gains, you say. How? Why? It results from the fact that it takes place. But why does it take place? What motive has induced the contracting parties to effect the exchange? Has Exchange in itself a mysterious virtue, necessarily beneficial, and incapable of explanation?
Others make the advantage consist in this, that the one gives away a commodity of which he has too much in order to receive another of which he has too little. Exchange, they say, is a barter of the superfluous for the necessary. This is contradicted by facts which pass under our own eyes; for who can say that the peasant, in giving away the corn which he has raised, but which he is never to eat, gives away a superfluity? I see in this axiom very clearly how two men may make an accidental arrangement, but I see no explanation of progress.
Observation gives us a more satisfactory explanation of the power of Exchange.
Exchange has two manifestations—namely, union of forces, and separation of occupations.